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Journal pudge's Journal: Sunday Thoughts 30

Journal by pudge

Conservatism

George Will, Trent Lott, and others have been slamming "big-government conservatism." Despite some sneering about "modifying today's 'conservatism' with 'big-government' is redundant" (you know who you are), the fact is that conservatism has had small government as a cornerstone for decades. He who governs least, governs best.

OK, maybe it was more often in words than in deeds. Reagan was a proponent of small government, and increased social spending drastically. Government didn't shrink a whole lot under Gingrich's Congress, though the budget was balanced and the rate of growth was slowed a bit. But under Bush's government, disrectionary spending has tripled and spending per household is at the highest rate since 1944, when America was fighting a two-front world war.

And now there's a Medicare bill that -- even disregarding the complaints about government handouts to corporations, for the moment -- threatens to far exceed the cost of the war in Iraq, which supposedly was breaking the backs of the American public.

Now, as Will pointed out on This Week, Americans are largely in favor of "big government," so the Republicans must be in favor of it, too. Americans like Social Security and Medicare, which account for more than a third of all government spending. But that doesn't mean it needs to turn into a bidding war for the support of the AARP. Remember, when you accuse the government of selling votes to special interests, it is not just commercial entities.

I know that it somehow seems less dirty to buy votes from the AARP and NAACP than from the MPAA and NRA, but it is still harmful, and now that the Republicans are in the bidding too, the price for the citizenry is only going to go up.

Iraq Visit

Some people have actually been criticizing reporters for not reporting that Bush as going to be in Iraq last week. That's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever read. It's slavish devotion to supposed principles of journalism that have never been accepted by a significant percentage of journalists. Don't make me quote Sports Night to make my point!

Really, there is no journalistic principle that says you should report something just because you can. If it doesn't hurt anything to hold off, and there is a real benefit to holding off -- like helping to create a wonderful surprise for our troops in the field -- then there is no principle sacrificed. It's fine. Breathe a little.

Elected

On Face the Nation this week, author Garry Wills said the President lost the popular vote. I wish people would stop saying this. It is entirely false. 1. There is no such thing as a popular vote for President. 2. There is only one vote for President, the electoral college. 3. The President won the electoral college vote.

When people say the President lost the popular vote, they are either ignorant, or intending to impugn as illegitimate what is legitimate (i.e., they are attempting to be deceptive). Otherwise, there would be no point to saying it in the first place.

It is clear that the actual result of the so-called "popular vote" is meaningless, since you can't use what people are voting for (electors) and make it into something else (President). For example, in MA, many people don't vote in Presidential elections, because they know the Democrat candidate's electors will be selected.

Many people realize they are not voting in a nationwide Presidential election, but instead are voting in a statewide electoral election, and they vote differently because of it. I voted for Harry Browne in 1996, but if it had been a nationwide election for President, I would have voted for Dole.

If you are scratching your head and wondering if what I am saying makes sense, it does. Keep thinking on it until you get it. :)

So, we know the fact that more votes were cast for Gore's electors than for Bush's isn't meaningful in determining popular support. So why bring it up? What else could be the point, except ignorance (thinking it means something it does not, cannot, mean) or deception (trying to convince others of it)?

I bring this up every so often, because many people don't get it. I've heard many people -- including politicians -- say the President is illegitimate because he had fewer "popular votes." It's a lie. It's deception. It's nonsense. Using the so-called "popular vote" to say Bush is illegitimate, or that Gore was more popular, is simply incorrect, and saying it makes you look ignorant or deceptive.

I tend to think many people -- not the politicians, but most others -- who say Gore had more popular support, or that Bush is illegitimate, based on the "popular vote," are just ignorant. Most people I talk to about such issues don't understand social science methodology, don't understand polling, don't understand statistical analysis.

[Note that I am only talking about the vote. If you want to complain about the electoral college itself, or the judicial process that was used, fine, but I am not talking about that.]

Longshots

On This Week, George Stephanopolous interviewed Democratic Presidential candidates Dennis Kucinich, Carol Moseley Braun, and Al Sharpton, essentially asking them why they think they have a chance to win. On the one hand, I wish they would be asked that more often, because it is tiring to hear interviewers over and again treating them like they have a chance. And on the other hand, it would get tiring to hear them asking them why they think they have a chance over and again, too. Also, it seems there's not much point in assuming they don't have a chance: let the people decide in the primaries.

So, like many other people, I am conflicted. I guess I am glad we have a little bit of what George is doing, but that they don't dwell on it much.

Tony Snow

I hate Fox News. I find it to be exceptionally sensationalistic, with low journalistic standards. That doesn't mean I dislike all the people on Fox News, and it also doesn't apply to one of my favorite news programs: Fox News Sunday.

I admit, it is tilted to the right: the host and "co-host," Tony Snow and Brit Hume, are on the right. Usually, there are three panelists in addition: on the right, left, and in the middle. These are usually Bill Kristol, Mara Liasson, and Juan Williams. This week Brit was replaced by conservative Charles Krauthammer, and Mara (who seems to be dead-center moderate) was replaced by Ceci Connolly (who leans a bit left).

Anyway, despite its slight imbalance in personnel (even without the host, it has two conservatives, compared with one moderate and one liberal), Snow has been largely very fair and balanced throughout his tenure there. It's the reason why you keep seeing many Democrats appear on the show, week after week, because Snow has been an exceptionally good host: one that leans unmistakably to one side of the political spectrum, but asks the tough questions to all guests, and gives all guests the opportunity to state their case.

Ideally, you don't know the political leanings of a host of a program like this (I cannot figure out Tim Russert's political leanings). But even if you do, they shouldn't matter, if the host is doing his job. And that's Tony Snow.

Now, Snow is leaving Fox News Sunday for a radio program. I wish him the best, and hope that the new host of FNS, Chris Wallace, can continue the show in like fashion. I don't know, or care, if he is on the left or on the right (I actually kinda hope he is on the left, just to bring more preceived balance), as long as he conducts the interviews and panel discussions in a similar fashion.

Who knows? Maybe Wallace will do for FNS what Jon Stewart did for TDS. Maybe a year from now we'll forget the name of that guy who used to host before Wallace did.

This discussion was created by pudge (3605) for no Foes, but now has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Sunday Thoughts More

Sunday Thoughts

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  • I thought it was just a nice thing to do. If I were in Iraq as a soldier, I'd be delighted that the President came all the way there to wish me a happy Thanksgiving.

    I don't plan on voting for Bush in 2004 - I've sent money to Dean - but that doesn't keep me for giving him his props.

  • Yeah I hat all those people saying that Bush isn't the real president since he lost the popular vote. The central government isn't a pure democracy,but a republic. The central government doesn't come directly from the people, but from the states who in turn come directly from the people. Although this original plan for the government has been chipped away little by little over the years, and took a considerable blow after the civil war.

  • Can you name one Republican presidential administration in any of the "decades" you're talking about that has shrunk the size of government?

    A president has veto power over spending bills, so unless that veto kept getting overridden, you don't get to put the blame on Congress.

    On the other side, can you name one Republican Congress in any of those "decades" that shrunk the size of government?

    If not, why not?

    (BTW, a report just came out that says that of Bush's budget-busting spending hikes, only 45% i

    • Can you name one Republican presidential administration in any of the "decades" you're talking about that has shrunk the size of government?

      1. I didn't say "Republican," I said "conservative." I am talking about the conservatives who were embodied by Goldwater in the 60s, and whose standard is held aloft by WFB.

      2. I didn't say it was in practice, I said it was in principle. OK, I said neither, but I implied the latter.

      Or, in the words of David Brooks in the NY Times [nytimes.com] the other day: "Minority parties
      • So is conservatism, like Libertarianism, a political philosophy which has not been tested, in recent decades, on a large scale?
        • So is conservatism, like Libertarianism, a political philosophy which has not been tested, in recent decades, on a large scale?

          As a complete whole, this is true. It's also true of liberalism (Clinton, saddled with a GOP Congress, ended up with a very mdoerate economic record, JFK drastically cut taxes, etc.). But we've seen bits and pieces of both. Half of Reaganomics was decidedly conservative, and so is a big chunk of Bush's economic plan. Both cut taxes to stimulate growth, and it worked in both ca
          • I'd argue that FDR and JFK were great examples of liberalism in action, sadly, one for not very long.

            JFK "drastically" cut taxes on the top end from about 70% to about 50% IIRC. I think a 50% income tax on the wealthy qualifies as liberal. Wanting 40% makes you a "liberal" nowadays. :(

            • Nope, I was wrong -- the tax rate was 94% and JFK wanted to take it down to 65% (some sources say 70%, which is where it ended up being cut to).

              Please don't tell me you think a 65% top income tax rate is a conservative ideal :)

              And please don't tell me that all tax reductions are the same. It depends what side of the Laffer Curve you're on. (Unlike conservatives, I actually think the Laffer Curve is useful as a model of determining when to cut taxes -- I don't use it as a facade for a belief that taxes s

            • FDR was more than a few decades ago, and while the overall tax rate was still high (it was actually 91 percent, cut down to 70 percent!), the point was that he cut a large percentage, one that represented 2 percent of the economy and 12 percent of the federal revenues, about double what Bush's cut represents. And Bush dropped the bottom tax rate to 10 percent, lower than what Kennedy's bottom tax rate was.

              I know Kennedy was no conservative, that he was a liberal, but cutting more than 12 percent of revenu
  • illegitimate. The margins were so slim in some places for electing the electors that it's impossible to know who really would have won there if it weren't for the infamous hijinks of the RNC and DNC.

    Did the number of dead that voted for Gore equal the number of fake people that voted for Bush, and the number of people that were turned away? Did the respective electioneering hijinks cancel each other out?

    The election was won on less than 1,000(537 IIRC) votes when all was said and done. That's hardly a
    • I would classify the entire election as illegitimate. The margins were so slim in some places for electing the electors that it's impossible to know who really would have won there if it weren't for the infamous hijinks of the RNC and DNC.

      You say that as though there is some standard for who is the winner other than whomever the process says is the winner. If the process is followed, then the winner, at the end, is legitimate. That's how it works.

      It's like someone saying, "my team would have won if the
      • Legitimate also means in accordance with recognized or accepted standards or principles. Depending upon definition it can also refer to lawfulness or something government sanctioned(the one you referenced).

        We live in a democratic republic. Our government is founded on the principle of being by and for the people. It rules, as arguably all governments rule, by popular mandate(authority is given to government by the people). In the last election, a disparity occured between legitimacy in the legal sens
        • The distinction you are attempting to make, between legal legitimacy, and principled legitimacy, was overlooked by the very canidate you seem to support, Mr. Gore.

          If Al Gore had asked for fairness (a full statewide recount,) ironically, he would have won according to analysis done 6 months later by the major newspapers. Instead he asked to cherry-pick which counties should be recounted. He picked those he (reasonably) thought would favor him and tried to avoid recounting counties that would favor Bush.
        • In the last election, a disparity occured between legitimacy in the legal sense (as in granted by governmental authority), and legitimacy in the principled sense.

          No such disparity occurred, except for in the minds of the people who lost.

          The difference in Florida was so small as to make the entire vote statistically a tie. Hence my musings on which side actually won

          Bush actually won. There is no question on this. The law doesn't give a damn about "statistical ties." There is no winner in an electio
          • No such disparity occurred, except for in the minds of the people who lost.

            Which was just over half the voters nationwide. I didn't vote for Gore or Bush btw, I voted for Mickey Mouse.

            There is no winner in an election but that which the ends up with the most votes following the popularly approved legal procedures. You think those legal procedures can somehow be in conflict with the popular will: that's a fiction. The people selected those procedures. And if they don't like how their decisions in this r
            • >No such disparity occurred, except for in the minds of the people who lost.

              Which was just over half the voters nationwide.

              Well, what I intended to imply was that there are a bunch of sore losers out there who invented the disparity in their own minds as a way to cope with the loss.

              You completely ignore the point I was trying to make. That not all of the processes were followed.

              If you were trying to make that point, you did it poorly, as you did not bring up any examples of this. And in the end,
              • I'm not meaning to be an ass I'm just dead tired and not spending nearly enough time on my posts. Apologies.

                I'm contending that both parties cheated. Here's a CNN link [cnn.com] that goes into the illegal absentee ballots. I can't seem to dig one up quickly on the dead voting in Florida or any of the other stuff related to the Democrats but I'm sure it exists. Hence the argument that since we know that more votes than the margin of victory were fraudulent that it is impossible to declare a clear winner. But a w
                • Great, you link to Bill Press, someone who is as biased and partisan as they come. Yawn. And it provides no evidence of cheating, only evidence of mistakes.

                  Hence the argument that since we know that more votes than the margin of victory were fraudulent that it is impossible to declare a clear winner.

                  You continue to imagine that the winner of the election is anything other than the person who has the most votes counted at the end of the process. It simply doesn't matter what happened during the proces
  • When people say the President lost the popular vote, they are either ignorant, or intending to impugn as illegitimate what is legitimate (i.e., they are attempting to be deceptive). Otherwise, there would be no point to saying it in the first place.

    I give many of them the benefit of the doubt. I imagine they mean that they think the total number of people that voted for Democratic electors was higher than the number of people that voted for Republican electors, and this indicates (indirectly, sure) that f
  • And now there's a Medicare bill that -- even disregarding the complaints about government handouts to corporations, for the moment -- threatens to far exceed the cost of the war in Iraq, which supposedly was breaking the backs of the American public.

    Sorry Pudge, but meaning just what ?

    And now there's my Visa bill that exceeds my grocery bill (which is too high) - that doesn't mean the correct answer is to refuse to pay the credit card off.

    And now there's my Income Tax bill that exceeds my geek-slush-f
    • The meaning is that the cost of the bill is too high. The point of juxtaposing it to the Iraq war is that many people are saying we can't afford the Iraq war, and yet we are all taking on this huge program expansion, which costs a lot more than the war does.

      You are referring in your examples to debts and obligations. This Medicare bill is neither a debt, nor an obligation. It's an "entitlement," which is another word for "handout." This is going to balloon the deficit, to pay for something the federal
      • You are referring in your examples to debts and obligations. This Medicare bill is neither a debt, nor an obligation.

        Well, I'd think I was referring to "responsibilities" versus "nice to haves". I'm not in the US so I probably have a skewed opinion of what Medicare is, but I don't see a problem in the government putting "investment in the people" over and above ... well... I'll troll and call it "imperialistic adventures", but the point I'm making is not primarily anti-Iraq (as I believe your comment was
        • At the federal level, it should be scrapped. The federal government does not have the legal authority to do it, without a Constitutional amendment. However, since that cannot happen, because too many people are in favor of it regardless of the legality of it, it should be kept to the bare minimum to help only those who have the greatest need, waste should be aggressively cut out, and "handouts to corporations" -- which existed in Medicare long before the current bill, don't let the Democrats fool you -- s
          • "handouts to corporations"

            Ah, agreed there, wasn't sure if you meant handouts at the level of the individual or the organisation who figures out the best way to 'game' the system.

            don't let the Democrats fool you

            Not being a US citizen I tend to forget which ones the Democrats are ;^) ... the finer points of US politick'ing pass me by (or rather, I decide not to trust the summaries offered by the US or the international press as being over-simplifications with disguised agendas of their own) but I am in
  • Just some more information about the electoral voting process. As much as some people seem to hate it, it gives the individual voter more power. Read this impartial mathematical analysis [colorado.edu] of the "two-level" electoral voting process.

    About the question of mandate. The going definition seems to be that an elected official has a "mandate" if he receives greater than the majority of the popular vote. The impression being that, since less than 50% of the American public cast votes for Bush (I'll be precise, B

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